


tonight we surrender

by mass_hipgnosis



Series: websterverse [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, SHIP DARCY WITH ALL THE THINGS, Utter Nonsense, what even is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 13:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2111982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mass_hipgnosis/pseuds/mass_hipgnosis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Darcy hang out in the workshop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tonight we surrender

**Author's Note:**

> See, originally, the next part was going to be from Steve's POV and cover his return to New York and getting the band back together. But then Tony decided to get his feels all over the place. And then he decided he was done doing feels and I had to somehow gracefully transition toward something resembling an ending. (I think I blew the dismount on that one, but in my defense, it fought me every word of the way.) So have some Tony!feels. Okay then.

News of Darcy's double-secret promotion at least explained the weirdness of the latter half of Pepper's visit, but it sure as hell didn't explain Tony's own reaction. Since when did he tell Pepper to butt out?

_Since you broke up and it got weird,_ his common sense replied.

Tony decided that was ridiculous and since he'd never listened to his common sense before he sure as hell wasn't going to start now. Clearly he should have a drink until the feeling went away.

He was six fingers into a bottle of 1959 Glenlivet when he was interrupted. “Is this a private pity-party, or can anyone join?”

“Are you going to give me shit for drinking alone?”

“Of course not, for three reasons: you've actually cut way back on the alcohol just in the last couple of weeks as compared to when I first met you; you drinking alone is far preferable from a PR standpoint to you drinking in public; and you're a goddamn adult and you can have a fucking drink if you want to.”

“See, no. Apparently I cannot, because this is usually the point where I get a lecture.”

Her eyes got comically big. “Yeah, no, I'm not touching that. There is no good response to that statement. How 'bout them Yankees?”

“The Yankees suck. Why are you not on my ass about being self-destructive?” he needled her.

“Hey, I'm on your ass _all the time_ about being self-destructive. I just define it differently: not eating, not sleeping, building devices intended to rip a hole in the universe out of duct tape and happy thoughts.” Her brow furrowed, and she added thoughtfully, “Okay, that last one is usually Jane. Getting all holier-than-thou about the state of your liver is not on my list, largely because you wouldn't listen anyway and I'm not sure it's even my business. You don't drive drunk, you're not violent, you've never puked all over everything I love. Basically, your drinking has never hurt or even really inconvenienced me, so I don't feel like I have the right to give you shit about it.”

He toasted her with his glass. “Your heretofore unprecedented in the history of Tony Stark decision to keep your opinion of my life choices to yourself is much appreciated.”

“Excellent,” she said, and helped herself to his scotch as she took a seat next to him on the workshop couch. She took a sip and made a face, immediately handing it back. “Oh, that's disgusting, it _literally_ tastes like ass. DUM-E, sweetheart, can you make me a Long Island Iced Tea?”

“What have you done to my bots?” Tony demanded, when DUM-E had presented her with what was, apparently, a perfect cocktail, complete with a little umbrella and a wedge of lime. “Seriously. DUM-E is not capable of that kind of precision, he can't even be trusted with a fire extinguisher!”

“He can _hear_ you!” she chided him. “I'd spray you with a fire extinguisher too, if you talked about me like that!”

He smirked. “You shouldn't have said that, that just makes me want to do it.”

She stuck out her tongue at him and crossed her eyes, then sighed when he laughed. “Speaking of keeping opinions to yourself. Apparently I kind of fail at that. In that I had a braindead word vomit moment when Pepper was here, and it was really mostly about me, but she seemed to think it was about you. And it occurred to me later...you know, once it was too late...that you might see it as talking about you behind your back to your ex-girlfriend. Which, I guess is exactly what it was.”

_So I'm not the only one having Pepper-related weird feelings. I'm not sure if that's comforting or not._ “What did you say? Did you talk about my ass? It's a great ass, I can see how it would come up in conversation.”

“No! I said I thought you might be bipolar, jerk! Or, well, I said my best friend Anna is bipolar and you remind me of her. With the-” she sort of waved her hand at him vaguely- “stuff. Like sometimes being a sleep-deprived self-destructive freakshow of recklessness.”

He snorted at that and clinked his glass against hers, because it was true, and he was going to have to remember that particular phrasing for the next time he was in a meeting with Fury and trying to get that vein in his temple to throb visibly. “Tactful,” he observed with dripping sarcasm.

“I told Pepper it seemed familiar because it does. But I'm not a doctor-which means it could be a hundred other things, up to and including me hearing hoofbeats and thinking pink zebras, and I should have just kept my mouth shut.”

Tony stared at her for a moment, then the dam broke and he started snickering. “You're cute,” he managed to get out around what were rapidly becoming tipsy giggles. “You were worried about, what, offending me?”

She nodded, looking half-sad and half-annoyed that he was laughing at her, and it was seriously the cutest fucking thing he'd ever seen. “If you think you're the first person to wonder if I'm mentally ill, well, sorry Pinup, but you're at least twenty five years late.”

“I was less concerned about what I said-because I suspected you wouldn't give a shit-and more about the part where I was _talking about you behind your back.”_

He could see that she wanted to protest further, and he cut her off with, “I use JARVIS' security feeds to spy on you. Everyone really. All the time. Just in common areas, I'm not a creeper, but if you're worried about it being 'behind my back,' don't. If he really thought it was something I would give even half a shit about he would have shown me the conversation.”

She relaxed back into the couch at that, which was not the reaction Tony was used to when he confessed to that kind of thing. Usually it led to phrases like _social boundaries_ and _invasion of privacy_ being thrown around. “Oh. Yes, that is a very good point, JARVIS secretly lives to rat people out when they do dumb shit. Okay, then. So, we're good.”

“We're fine.” _Apparently._

“Awesome.” She put her head on his shoulder. “How do you feel about John Cusack movies?”

“I feel pretty good about them.”

So they watched _High Fidelity_ and _Grosse Pointe Blank._

They were halfway through the second movie when Darcy-who had been matching him glass for glass with her little umbrella drinks-snagged a pillow from the other couch and rested it on Tony's thigh, laying down with her head in his lap. Her hourglass curves were exaggerated lying on her side. “This isn't a come-on,” she advised him, turning back to the TV screen. “Just, I'm kinda drunk and I want to be comfortable.”

He tugged on a curl that had escaped her ponytail. “I read you loud and clear, Chesty La Rue.”

Fifteen minutes later, Darcy turned to look up at him again, and reached up to scrub her fingertips over his facial hair. He winced when one of her fingernails caught his lip. “Huh. I thought it'd be scratchy.”

“Was it really necessary for your to maul me, drunky?”

“Allow me my scientific curiousity, Tin Man, I don't have any beardsperience.” She smiled up at him loopily. “Hey, we should make out. I've never kissed a bearded dude before. I bet it's not as complicated as trying to maneuver around a tongue ring.”

“I thought this wasn't a come-on,” Tony reminded her, amused.

She cringed and put a hand over her eyes. “Ugh, no, never mind, I didn't say that, Drunk Darcy makes terrible life choices. That's how I ended up interning in New Mexico, which, okay, I met Jane, but I was also almost killed by a giant fire-breathing robot.”

Tony laughed at that a little. “Drunk Tony also makes terrible life choices.”

“What's the craziest thing you ever did, drunk?”

“Hnn. Crazy, or awesome?”

“Is there a difference in your mind?”

“Not usually.”

“Tell me tell me tellmetellmetellme! But it doesn't count if it's something you would _also_ do sober.”

He pouted. “But that cuts out at least half of my best stories!”

“Cope,” she replied, completely unsympathetic.

“There was the time I went to bed in Malibu with two women and I woke up in Amsterdam with four.”

She snorted. “I said stuff you wouldn't _also do sober.”_

He scowled. “Fine, I got nothing. What's yours?”

She grinned. “Drunk me totally pranks hungover me. In sophomore year my roommate came home and I was building a scale model of campus out of textbooks and pringles canisters on the floor of our dorm room. Once I was finished, I hid my glasses on myself and went to bed. When I got up the next morning it was like Godzilla vs Tokyo.” She snickered. “It was probably hilarious for everyone who wasn't Hungover Darcy, I kinda wish I'd filmed it.”

“I may have taken the Mark II for a test flight on three days of no sleep. Sleep deprived is a _kind_ of drunk,” he added wheedlingly.

“For you? It really, really is,” Darcy agreed fondly. “And I think we'll count that as something you wouldn't also do sober, because even though you _would,_ then it would have been an _actual_ test flight, instead of a joyride.”

“It was a really awesome joyride,” Tony reminisced. “Except for the part where the suit iced up and I almost hit the ground at terminal velocity.”

Tony felt shaking against his side and looked down, a little alarmed. But Darcy wasn't crying, she was shaking with laughter. “Oh my god. You either have the worst luck ever and the best, most seriously on the ball guardian angel, or vice versa, I can't decide which.”

He cuffed her on the back of the head, gently. “Smartass.”

“Weirdo.” 

The movie had ended while they were talking, the screen defaulting back to streaming live TV, showing an old episode of _Friends._ Ross was demonstrating the Hug and Roll.

Darcy snickered. “You know, I tried that once. It soooo doesn't work. I'm lucky my ex was a heavy sleeper.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Not a cuddler?”

She shrugged. “I enjoy cuddling when I'm _awake_ to enjoy it,” Darcy replied cautiously. “When I'm actually going to sleep, I need room, not some dude trying to spoon me.”

“I hate spooning. What are you supposed to do with your arm?”

“I know, right? If I'm the big spoon, I just kinda tuck it under my boobs, but I wouldn't be able to sleep like that. I can go twenty minutes, tops, before I've got either a cramp or pins and needles.”

“Before...well, before, the difference between passing out and falling asleep was usually just semantics, so it didn't really matter who was there or if they were lying on top of me. After-” he tapped the casing of the arc reactor to indicate after what- “there's only a couple of positions I can sleep in that aren't either suffocating or painful, and they all require some pretty advanced pillow placement.”

“Well, that sucks, but it's better than being dead,” Darcy said frankly after a considering moment, instead of walking on eggshells, or worse-offering pity.

“Pretty much. And it doesn't hurt when I'm vertical, now that my ribs are used to the extra weight. So I'll take it.” With a start, Tony realized that was the most he'd ever talked to anyone about the arc reactor-even Pepper, and she'd had her hand in his chest.

Oh, he talked about the _technology_...the reactor itself and how awesome he was for creating it. Electromagnets and palladium and (re)discovering a new element. He never talked about the often-painful realities of having a fist-sized hole where his sternum was supposed to be, or that he remembered being tied down on the operating table, that he'd struggled and that was one of the reasons for the extensive scarring.

“Is that why you hate sleeping but you'll totally crash if I set up a bed on the couch?” Darcy asked.

“I always hated sleep, but it doesn't help,” Tony admitted. 

“And you don't want one of those awesome beds that have buttons and move into like eleventy million different positions?”

He sneered at her fondly. “Not being six years old, no. I don't want a bed with buttons.”

“Is it because they're for old people? If I promise not to make cracks about your age for a month will you get one anyway? Because you can't keep sleeping on the couch. Sooner or later you _will_ get your face drawn on.”

“Okay, if you were able to resist making cracks about my age for a _month_ I would buy you a pony and your own island, that's how likely it is, number one. Number two, you would be the one drawing on my face and we both know it, so it seems somewhat disingenuous for you to warn me about it.”

“Ooh, can I name her Rainbow Dash?”

“Your imaginary pony that you will never, ever have? Sure, knock yourself out. Although I always preferred Pinkie Pie,” he said, mostly just to watch her head explode.

And of course, because it was Darcy and she lived to fuck with his expectations, she just grinned and said, “I _knew_ you were a Brony! I'm getting you a t-shirt.”

_One of these days,_ Tony vowed, _I will surprise her. Somehow. With something._

She smirked at him like she knew exactly what he was thinking and thought it was hilarious and improbable. He flicked her on the nose. “Get out of my head, it's creepy.”

“But I like it in there, I know where everything is!”

“Creeper!” he accused her.

“Whore.”

“Child.”

“Analogophobe.”

“That is not even a thing that exists, what is wrong with you?”

“Do you want the list alphabetically or chronologically?”

Tony muffled her snickering with the palm of his hand and yelped when she licked him. He wiped off the excess spit on her hair and resolved never to tell her that watching cheesy old movies with her was the most fun he'd had with another person in years.

After all, there was only room for so much ego in the Tower, and he had seniority.


End file.
